


To Serve Satan: Miss deManners' Guide for the Heavenly Host

by Gray_Days



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Crowley Loves Humanity (Good Omens), Crowley is Good at Being a Demon (Good Omens), Gen, Working Lunches For Moral Adversaries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-12 08:27:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29007540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gray_Days/pseuds/Gray_Days
Summary: Hastur and Ligur might be irredeemable wankers, but they're right about one thing: sometimes, art reallydoesrequire that personal touch.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 28





	To Serve Satan: Miss deManners' Guide for the Heavenly Host

**Author's Note:**

> Also on Tumblr [here](https://cineresis.tumblr.com/post/641408319350800384/to-serve-satan-miss-demanners-guide-for-the).

"Would either of you like something off the dessert trolley, sirs?"

For once, it was Crowley who looked up with such sudden diamond-bright joy that it cut.

Crowley _loved_ dessert trolleys, and every other such invention. They were so clever, so human, so efficient in solving the problem of catering to individual choice by laying out an excess in advance. The indecisive would either agonise or overindulge; the partisan would sense scarcity, no matter that it would be routinely replenished, and turn the hoarding of a chocolate eclair into a battlefield as cutthroat as any royal family fighting over the inheritance. There would always, _always_ be food left over at the end of the day, and establishments like these didn't offer stale cake to the homeless. They were gluttony on wheels.

Aziraphale was giving him a warning look, but it was a weary one, because he knew Crowley didn't care and nothing short of leaping across the table and dragging him bodily out the door would stop him, and Aziraphale would discorporate before making a scene in any restaurant that didn't deserve it.

"Oh, that caramel tart looks _divine,"_ Crowley effused. As the waitress smiled a pretty, practiced customer-service smile and began to bend down for one of the elegant little white china plates, he asked, "Could you tell me more about it?"

Crowley listened with such sincere interest that the waitress brightened with enthusiasm, scenting a wounded tip in the water. If it hadn't meant looking away for even a moment, he would have been taking notes, because —

"That sounds _perfect,"_ he said, and then when she began to lean down again, added without a micron's change in smile, "Might I ask for a slight change? It'd only be on paper."

_It'd only be on paper._ It was a beautiful little scorpion of a phrase. The key was to ask for just one alteration, seemingly so minor as to be inconsequential to the layman, that would utterly disarray the entire machine-smooth process of the kitchen. It couldn't just be any old change; they'd be prepared for such things as dietary restrictions or adjustments for personal preference, and only the really audacious restaurants would ever dare ask for more than a symbolic surcharge. The best kind of request was one that would not only dramatically alter the cooking process — asking for something to be made with treacle instead of sugar, for instance — but whose outcome couldn't possibly be predicted. Cooking was really just chemistry underneath, after all.

Aziraphale learned about cooking with the studious passion of an amateur because he loved food. Crowley loved food, too, but that wasn't why he cared about how it was made.

This waitress was a professional, and moreover she was the kind of professional who worked somewhere that laid out dessert trolleys as exquisitely as any ice sculpture, so the annoyance in her gracious agreement (of course, sir, anything the customer wants, our kitchen is always willing to oblige) was so well-disguised you'd practically have to read her mind to know it was there.

Crowley opened his mouth like a cobra.

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes my sleeping brain produces something magical. Sometimes, what it produces is coherent and fully-formed. I've learned not to ask questions and simply accept my role as a strangely specific cosmic vessel.
> 
> While I may not always be able to respond, every comment, kudos, and reblog brings light to my life, breath to my lungs, and indescribable power to the all-consuming nuclear furnace that fuels my drive to write. Thank you for reading. 🖤
> 
> Now [gloriously illustrated](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/647663510607888384/812954710206054410/image0.jpg) by [May Sparrow](https://queenburd.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
